(The writer was an aide to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Comments are welcome at sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com)
What triumphs in history - hope or despair? Despair seems to be the obvious answer, given the cycle of hostilities and violent conflicts that has repeated itself from time to time in different parts of the world. Yet, hope doesn't give up. It tenaciously continues its struggle to prove that conflict is not the normal condition of human existence, and that societies are capable of turning enmity into an entente through honest introspection and dialogue.
One such moment of triumph of hope over despair and cynicism came in Panama on Saturday, April 11, when Barack Obama and Raul Castro, Presidents of United States of America and Cuba, shook hands, sat for an hour for a one-on-one meeting on the sidelines of the 7th Summit of the Americas, and signaled the beginning of an end to one of the last vestiges of Cold War antagonism. With this first such meeting between leaders of the two neighbouring countries in more than 50 years, USA and Cuba took the decisive step to bury the past and to pave what Obama called "a path toward the future."
For decades, sane people all around the world had been wondering when the US-Cuba estrangement would end. In the end, all it took for sanity to prevail and for hope to overcome all the hurdles created by bellicose status-quoists was two transformative leaders sitting face-to-face, having a frank dialogue, recognising each other's sincerity, and deciding to change history.
The two neighbours are so close - the shortest distance between them is only 70 miles - and yet have remained so far apart, that it almost seemed as if they lived on two different planets. No diplomatic relations, no trade, no legal travel, and almost no people-to-people contact. However, for the sake of upholding historical truth, it must be emphasised that USA and Cuba were never equally to blame for this estrangement. Cuba is tiny in size, population and military might relative to its northern neighbor. As Obama admitted in Panama - a belated admission for a US president - "Cuba is not a threat to the United States". Yet, for over half-a-century, Cuba was sought to be punished and ostracised by a (now declining) superpower for the sole reason that it chose to be governed by a communist leadership. This leadership, headed by Fidel Castro, the main architect of the Cuban revolution in 1959 who resigned as president in 2008, decided to ally with the Soviet Union, the other (now extinct) superpower, precisely because of the bullying behaviour of successive administrations in the White House. The CIA hatched many plots to assassinate Fidel. With flimsy evidence, Washington placed Cuba on its list of state sponsors of terrorism. The resultant tightening of the economic blockade of Cuba heaped further miseries on its people.
But when in history have freedom-loving and self-respecting people ever bowed before hegemonism? Hats off to courageous Cubans. They suffered hardships, but did not submit to the machinations of the haughty regime-changers in the US. The communist rule under Fidel was by no means perfect, nor is it so under his brother Raul. Yet, Cuba's leaders and its people deserve credit for one thing - they converted adversity into opportunity. They vindicated Nietzsche's aphorism: "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger". Their spirit of survival made them discover and enrich their own latent capabilities. For example, notwithstanding its relative poverty, Cuba prides in having developed one of the finest healthcare systems in the world. At the time of Fidel's revolution in 1959, Cuba had a population of 6 million (which has now risen to 11 million). It had 6,000 doctors, of which 3,000 left for greener pastures in the US. Today it has 80,000 doctors. As many as 20,000 of them, along with 10,000 supporting healthcare workers, are serving in medical missions in 69 developing countries. Cuba is one of the global leaders in R&D in biotechnology.
Cuba may be far away from India, but it has earned a special place in the hearts of justice-loving Indians. Cutting across party lines, successive governments in India have shown solidarity with Cuba. Its ambassador in New Delhi, Abelardo Cueto Sosa, narrated an interesting - and inspiring - incident to me. Fidel Castro, as the president of the post-revolutionary Cuba, came to New York in 1960 to attend the session of the UN General Assembly. Shockingly, hotels refused accommodation to the Cuban delegation because it was "communist". Fidel threatened to camp on the United Nations grounds.
Finally, a rundown hotel in Harlem offered some rooms to him and his comrades, and he moved there. In a show of solidarity, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who too was in New York at the time to attend UNGA, went to meet Fidel along with Egypt's Nasser and Ghana's Nkrumah.
Che Guevara, Fidel's closest comrade-in-arms in the Cuban revolution, continues to be adored all over the world, including in India, for his idealism and courageous fight for justice and human dignity. He was warmly received by Nehru and other Indian leaders when he visited India in 1959.
Non-alignment may have lost much of its salience in today's changed world, but we cannot forget that India and Cuba were close allies in the Non-Aligned Movement. The special bond of friendship between Indira Gandhi and Fidel Castro was evident in the NAM summit in 1983 in New Delhi.
If NAM has become outdated because of the way the world has changed, let's not forget that the same dynamic of change has also rendered outdated the reality of USA as the 'sole superpower'. This was quite evident in the unbelievably candid statements of Obama and his colleagues in Panama. "Our Cuba policy, instead of isolating Cuba, was isolating the United States in our own backyard," confessed Benjamin J. Rhodes, Obama's adviser for strategic communications. Obama himself admitted that "the days in which ...the US could meddle with impunity, those days are past". He added that "there are dark chapters in our [USA's] history when we haven't fulfilled the principles and ideals on which our country was founded." One of those dark chapters was when the CIA successfully plotted to assassinate Che in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967. The 53-year-old president further drove home the point by saying, "The Cold War's been over for a long time. I'm not interested in having battles that, frankly, started before I was born." Not surprisingly, Raul Castro called Obama "an honest man".
Finally, Obama has begun to at least partially justify the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded in 2009. However, both he and Castro, as two hope-giving peace makers in a world riven by violence and tension, are surely in line for a higher reward, which is mentioned in the precept of Jesus Christ: "Blessed are the Peace Makers, for they shall be called the children of God."
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